Yes, he liked to look at, touch (I’m assuming) and built his empire around naked ladies. The creator of the Playboy brand and magazine, one of cultures more recent proponents of free speech, a man who was arguably a star in his own right, just died at the age of 91 and we should as much pay tribute to the guy as expose that which very few people consider when they think of Hef..that he was a feminist through and through.

In the end, I think the boobs and booties are at the heart of this, but not in the way you may think a dirty old man like me would be complaining about. Less a case of not seeing enough female skin anymore (and by enough I mean any really) the bunny corp. simply feels they can’t compete with the net for the showing of salacious material…so why show any really between their pages? The corp.’s CEO Scott Flanders said: “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.” But Scott, dude, you have thrown the baby out with the bathwater by taking the very heart from this magazine. Yes, some of us really did read Playboy for the articles, articles that seemed so much cooler (and really were) because of the butts and boobs, the ‘tude of the whole thang. In any given month you might get a new short story by the likes of an Ian Fleming, an Arthur C. Clarke, a Ray Bradbury or a Saul Bellow (to name just a few), along with tits; interviews with John Lennon and Jimmy Carter, as well as featured controversial and often times ‘blue’ comedians; showcased cartoons from Shel Silverstein, Jules Feiffer and Jack Cole, some naughty, some political, some fantastic (Hef, himself a cartoonist, was most sympathetic to keeping the cartoons in the change-up-but was convinced that the new magazine should not have cartoons…wtf Hef?)